China 3D-prints Buildings From Waste, Reducing Landfills

Monday, August 4th, 2014

3D Printed House by Win Sun, CC BY-SA

Many people think that 3D printing is a timely hype. Yes, it’s new, it’s interesting, but from what most of us have seen – it’s nothing revolutionary. Still, its most famous uses are for guns and human organs. And we can definitely see why people think it’s over-hyped. Organs haven’t had big success and guns.. well, I don’t think we need more weapons, especially so easily obtained ones. But a Chinese company is trying something else. Check out what Rubbish Begone, waste removal London company has prepared for you in this blog post.

WinSun is the name, 3D printed houses are the game. Now, you have probably heard of the waste problems China is experiencing. And housing issues, for that matter. What’s interesting about this company is, that they printed 10 one-room houses in 24 hours! Each building is around 650 square feet and the cost for creating it is the measly $4800. But the best part, and the one we took interest in this subject, is that the materials used for printing are recycled construction waste and cement.

3D Printed House by Win Sun, CC BY-SA

There have been demonstrations by the University of Southern California – they printed the outer shell of a whole building in one day. Then, European architects took the opportunity to show-off their designs and 3D printed houses with rich ornaments and correspondingly high prices. But WinSun leads the pack by showcasing the sheer practicality of the technology by dishing out 10 buildings in one day by using recycled construction waste. This I call revolution.

WinSun’s arsenal consists of four 3D printers which are 20 feet tall, 33 feet wide and 132 feet long each. On the attached video you can see how the printers squeeze out the recycled materials. Whipped cream, anyone? The house is formed layer by layer and once the elements are done, they are brought to the construction site and connected to create a not-so-beautiful, but quite cheap and practical small house.

As I wrote above, the materials used for the creation of the houses are recycled construction materials. And China seems to produce quite a bit of that! The New York Times reports, that Chinese buildings are usually brought down after 30 years. This number compares to 75 years in the US and even more in Europe. And this is exactly the reason China’s generated building waste nears 2 billion tonnes per year. 2 billion. That’s a huge amount of waste! The worst part is, China reuses less than 5% of it, while for example, Japan ups the number to 95%. I hope this clarifies things and why we are so excited about this new 3D printing.

3D Print Robot by Win Sun, CC BY-SA

Mainly because it can solve both housing and waste problems we are all having. And because it’s cheap, while at it. Basically, if you are a developer, you can effectively halve your construction costs! The problem is the scaling. After all, you can make a wall as big as the printer at most. However, WinSun are developing a Minibuilder robot, as they call it, which will be able to print houses on the spot.